‘The Conductor’ Review: Seizing the Baton

When Marin Alsop became the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007, she was the first woman to lead a major orchestra in the United States. Alsop, who concluded her tenure in that position last year, recounts her life in classical music in the documentary “The Conductor,” directed by Bernadette Wegenstein. Alsop’s biography is a story of continually challenging a field in which the sexist idea that women can’t conduct persists.

The only child of a cellist and a violinist, Alsop recalls being a young girl and seeing Leonard Bernstein conduct; she saw his remarks to the audience as being directed straight at her. Alsop would eventually work under the mentorship of Bernstein (shown looking animated and, frankly, oblivious to the boundaries of personal space in old video) at the Tanglewood Music Center. But much of her career required taking initiative when opportunities were denied to her.

She formed an all-female, mostly string swing band. (She speaks of how the demands of the genre ran counter to the perfection classical musicians aspire to.) After being rejected from Juilliard’s conducting program (she says a teacher told her she would never conduct), she founded her own orchestra. And in Baltimore, where her selection for the job originally rankled musicians, she started a music program for children.

As filmmaking, “The Conductor” takes a fairly standard approach. The most engaging portions involve music-making itself. Alsop explains her ideas about Mahler. (“There’s a reason why Mahler put every single note in the piece,” she says in voice-over, as the movie shows her on a boat in Switzerland, where she likens a mist to the opening of a Mahler symphony; her job, she continues, is to understand his motivations.) Elsewhere, musicians and pupils describe Alsop’s encouraging approach.

The Conductor
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.